It’s a slight story. Woody (Bruce Dern), a confused old guy with only a few dollars to his name, is convinced he has won a sweepstake $1 million. He hasn’t, and his son Tom (Will Forte) knows he’s been had by one of the oldest scams in the business. But Woody has the piece of paper which says he’s won and insists on his son driving him from Montana to Nebraska to collect the money.

Perhaps only Alexander Payne, who made About Schmidt and the wonderful wine odyssey Sideways, could make something of this. He does, investing his country characters with an endearing naivety, but not exactly dubbing them innocents. Take June Squibb’s doughty wife of Woody. She knows full well that he’s a fool to go and remembers his friends and relatives with a very rheumy eye. Her furious plain-speaking is one of the chief joys of the film

She’s right too, because as soon as they get wind of the $1 million, a lot of them want to get hold of a part of it, particularly Stacy Keach’s Ed, who says he’s owed more than $1,000 and intends to get a lawyer in if he doesn’t lay his hands on the dough. No matter how hard Woody’s son protests there is no money, nobody believes him.

The film is more of an eccentric road movie than a study of old age on the skids. En route Woody is hurt in a fall and stops in the small and now decaying Nebraska town where he was born — and was guy lives who borrowed a compressor from him decades ago and never gave it back. So they steal it back from what they think is his barn, only to find they have gone to the wrong address.

Bob Nelson’s scenario is full of humour but doesn’t patronise Woody and his hick friends. Dern, one of America’s best veterans, gets a chance to deliver the kind of performance he’s often been noted for. No grandstanding, but a thorough appreciation of the character he is playing.